[WIP] Enlighten Contest - Future Courtyard

Subtle 1rony

I've started on this contest and decided its due time to start giving updates.

I had to spend a decent amount of time becoming familiar with the project and Enlighten's workflow. It has been illuminating and I have definitely learned much more about its realtime GI capabilities. A couple links that have been of use are:

Alex Lovett's blog(creator of the original scene):http://www.shadowood.uk/Store/Store/

Unite talk on Enlighten:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQLgR_a-g_8

Unity blog post on Enlighten that has some helpful hints on how your uvs are handled for a realtime bake: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/11/05/awesome-realtime-gi-on-desktops-and-consoles/

I think a large part of changing the light will come from changing the original materials. Here is my work in progress so far, mainly working with changing the normals.

As for the final look I'm largely inspired by various science fiction forms. I'd like to maintain the scene's function as a courtyard, but in a futuristic construction. Here are some of my references from well known movies.

Currently I'm trying to establish the base forms through the normal map and replacing the original materials

Subtle 1rony

Hey guys, I've made some progress in my spare time.

I made a trim texture to reuse throughout the scene:

And here are some wip shots of the scene as I was going along, the last being the most recent:

 

Not a lot of time left as we are nearing the end, but I will try to get this looking like something as I continue to replace materials.

Thanks for checking it out!

Subtle 1rony

I'm a little bit further on this shot. Still have some remaining areas of the scene to touch on, so I can show some more angles. Happy for the extension, thank you to the organizers for providing a bit of extra time on this one. 

Subtle 1rony

a new shot! I've been working on getting closer to the final angles before the deadline. 

Subtle 1rony

One more. I may make some color changes before submitting the final ones. 

bent_vector

Nice use of metallic materials. Did you use something for SSR or are those natural reflections?

Subtle 1rony

Thanks @bent_vector! For each shot I used a reflection probe placed in the same location as the camera. I did see an ssr script in the project, which I'm not sure but I think it may be included with the unity standard assets now. I tried it and they didn't seem to reach the same resolution as the probes. Still a viable option though and probably more realistic in terms of performance.

HeliosDoubleSix

Such a dramatic change, I love the sci-fi look and all the texture work you have done. I'd say I prefer it in the shots where you have the material more matte/patchy with shiny spots than super smooth shiny as it helps describe the lighting and looks less synthetic, in reality you'd have contribution from both a rough surface with scratches and imperfections and then on top of that a super smooth gloss layer, however doing this without multi layer expensive shaders is tricky/impossible right now, also by placing a lot of the lighting information into your textures ( very dark AO style in the diffuse ) you lose some of the natural bounced lighting as any light that falls on that will be negated, the Albedo/Diffuse texture should be reserved for color information and be fairly low contrast with a PBR workflow/material setup now employed by Unity. It is a tricky balancing act as you don't want it to end up all washed out looking either, and the current coarseness/stepping of interpolation between different roughness/blurry reflections makes it a bit of an art for sure :-) also in reality you would have materials that have much strong sharper reflections at tight angles ( fresnel ) and reflections that blur greatly when source is at a distance, the new SSR Screen Space Reflections has some good controls but it is still a fight between performance, quality/artifacts and artistic control that makes some material types very hard to get right, and while we have Fresnel it is too often over powering IMO - subtle is the key word in all of this, and subtle is the hardest thing to technically and artistically get right. So I think a mix of matte surfaces, super shiny smooth elements in moderation and an in between scratches rough and smooth work well in combination. The reference shots from Oblivion show this used of matte next to shiny quite well. And it has to be said editing roughness maps is quite tricky/sensitive affair for sure, so keep up the good work!

Subtle 1rony

@HeliosDoubleSix
Hi Alex, thanks for the feedback! Really good point about keeping the albedo light so as to make the indirect lighting more visible. GI can be so subtle and soft that its easy to overpower it.

And I think I got a little heavy handed turning up the reflections...you can see it progressively get more and more shiny in my progress shots:)

So I think a mix of matte surfaces, super shiny smooth elements in moderation and an in between scratches rough and smooth work well in combination. 

This last bit is spot on about keeping a nice contrast between smooth and rough surfaces. Just like contrast between light and dark, the same also applies to shiny and matte. I will try to keep this in mind for future projects.

And thanks for writing up your blog and putting Unity through your extensive stress testing. You definitely laid the groundwork for us in this contest. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your future work. 

Cheers!

-Eric